The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Commercial turf-care vehicles typically used for cutting, grooming and maintaining grass at golf courses, sporting venues, parks, etc., often include one or more grass cutting reel assemblies. Each reel assembly includes a reel cylinder that comprises a plurality of cutting blades helically disposed about a shaft that is rotationally mounted within a reel cylinder frame of the reel assembly. Each reel assembly additionally includes a bedknife assembly that is fixedly mounted to the reel cylinder frame and includes a bedknife blade with which the cutting blades of the reel cylinder contact to cut grass as the turf-care vehicle traverses the ground. In many instances, a motor, e.g., an electric or hydraulic motor, is mounted to the reel cylinder frame and operably connected to the reel cylinder shaft to drive the reel cylinder and cutting blades during grass cutting operation of the respective vehicle. Additionally, such reel assemblies typically include a front roller rotationally disposed within a front roller frame that is pivotally mounted to the reel cylinder frame such that a position of the front roller, relative to the reel cylinder, can be manually adjusted to set a height at which the grass is cut.
The frequency-of-clip (FoC) of a reel assembly for such turf-care vehicles refers to the distance the reel assembly travels before the next swath of grass is cut (i.e. the forward distance traveled between successive blade to bedknife contacts). With reference to golf course turf-care vehicles, the FoC generally determines the speed at which a golf ball will roll relative to a given cut grass surface (i.e., greens, collars, tee-boxes, approaches, fairways, etc.). It is therefore imperative that the FoC be selectably variable. At least some turf-care vehicle manufacturers have addressed the issue of selectably controlling the FoC by designing and manufacturing hybrid reel mowers that are structured and operable to independently control the traction speed (i.e., the speed at which the vehicle is driven forward) and the rotational speed of the reel cylinder. However, in such vehicles, the desired FoC must be manually adjusted, or reset, whenever the operator transitions from one cutting scenario to another (e.g. from greens to collars to tee-boxes, etc.).
The height-of-cut of a reel assembly (HoC) refers to the vertical (or orthogonal) distance between the top of the tip of the bedknife blade and a ground surface plane formed between the bottom of the front and rear rollers of the reel assembly. HoC determines the mowing height of the respective reel assembly (i.e., the height at which the grass is cut). Similar to the FoC, the HoC differs depending on the type of surface to be cut, with greens usually having the lowest HoC and roughs having the highest. Typically to set or adjust the HoC, a one or two point manual adjustment system is implemented to adjust the position of the front roller frame relative to the reel cylinder frame. Such manual adjustment is time consuming and must be repeated whenever the surface requiring maintenance changes (e.g. going from cutting a green to cutting the collar). In many instances, to reduce such set-up time, facilities tend to own one vehicle with multiple sets of reel assemblies set at different heights, or own multiple vehicles configured with reel assemblies set at different heights, both of which are very expensive.